Durant Photographyperformance 2010
Durant Photographyperformance 2010
Durant Photographyperformance 2010
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I will be shot with a rifLe at 7:45 P»M. I hope to have some good photos. —Chris Burden
PHOTOGRAPHY
PERFORMANCE
g'2 / www.aperture.org
unclear whether the arrangement of violation. Yoko Ono's Cut Piece comes
objects within the frame is the result of the artist's intervention to mind (a Happening f
or if he is just the luckiest and most sharp-eyed flaneur in the members were asked to jo
world. His shuffling of products in the supermarket, where cat- clothing with a pair of sc
food cans balance on watermelons, for instance (Cats and performances, in which viewers were invited to interact and even
Watermelons' 1992), is sweetly hilarious, showing just how violate the artist's body with an assortment of implements. By
easily the categories of the prosaic world can be undermined contrast, with Manchot's works, although we may experience a
and reimagined. And the humbly elegant Extension of Reflection visceral reaction to the intrusion, the event is enacted solely for the
(1992), which depicts the transient marks of a bicycle's tracks camera and not for a live audience: the viewer is thus never personally
through a pair of puddles, is astoundingly economical in its implicated in the breach of the artist's physical boundaries,
evocation of things both earthly and celestial. To paraphrase Maurice Merleau-Ponty, the body does not occupy
Intrigued by the canonical status that many performance images space like an object or thing, but instead inhabits, animates, or
have attained, and by how these often chaotic and impromptu even haunts space. In Erwin Wurm's "one-minute sculptures,"
events had been formalized through photography, Hayley Newman the body performs or experiences a slapstick rebuke of personal
created a faux archive—she calls it an "aspirational portfolio"— space and social etiquette. Wurm cloaks his Conceptualism
for a nonexistent performance career. One action, Crying Glasses behind the deadpan nature of the snapshot in pictures such as
landscapes in the social-humanist tradition before deciding to in the humor of dispirited futility
spend more time in front of the camera than behind it. Crediting and Martha Rosier, Bonajo's Furnitu
Roman Signer's "action sculptures" as a catalyst, Lamson now presents an array of young women, trussed to the saddest
works in sculpture, video, and performance, as well as photography. assortment of generic domestic items. Unencumbered by any duty
His performance-inspired photo-series Intervention (2007-8) could to the heroic, yet still capable of provocation, Bonajo's photographs
be described as documents of temporary urban earthworks. As if present a cruel joke, as if Ikea had promised salvation but delivered
to convince us that the world is full of these lesser epiphanies if we only unrelenting boredom. We laugh, and then an uncomfortable
would only open our eyes to see them, Lamson's simple and direct shudder of recognition chills our bones.©
photographs allow us to imagine stumbling upon random poetic
THIS PAGE:
collisions of materials, such as a helium-filled balloon strategically THIS PAGE: Ana
Ana Mendieta,
Mendieta,Imagen de de
Imagen Yagul (Image
Yagul from
(Image Yagul),
from 1973; 1973;
Yagui),
OPPOSITE, TOP: Melanie Manchot, Gestures
Gestures of
of Demarcation
Demarcation II,
II, 2001;
2001;
placed to blind a surveillance camera; a ladder made of twine and
BOTTOM: Lilly McElroy, I throw myself
myself at
at men
men #14,
#14, 2008.
2008.
bananas, scaling a tree; a discarded mattress pinched into a bald
Mendieta: © Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection/courtesy Galerie Lelong, New York; Manchot: courtesy Robert Goff
tire like an elderly man squeezing into his old military uniform. Gallery, New York; McElroy: © the
Gallery, New artist/courtesy
York; Thomas Robertello
McElroy: © the artist/courtesy Gallery,
Thomas Robertello Gallery,Chicago
Chicago
;>4 / www.aperture.org
Wurm: courtesy Xavier Hufkens, Brussels: Orozco: courtesy the artist/Marian Goodman Gallery, New York; Lamson: courtesy the artist
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